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These are the stories that bring the statistics of austerity and inequality to life. The dignity, work ethic and stoicism of the families in this book should haunt every politician and media commentator who has painted the false picture of a 'benefits culture' and 'shirkers and scroungers'; this illuminating book should be required reading for them.

A brilliant book collecting together the evidence on just how out of touch Westminster government has become. Powerfully demonstrating why many families can no longer look forward to a safe future, and how they are coming to realise that inequality and the disdain of the wealthy is to blame

—Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford

The 'just about managing'. 'Hardworking families'. 'Alarm-clock Britain'. In recent years British political discourse has been filled with these slogans, as politicians claim to speak on behalf of families who are in work, but struggling to get by. This book allows us to hear from some of these families directly.

At a time when the impact of austerity is more relevant than ever, Just Managing? cuts through the debates and sloganeering to give some of the real people behind the headlines and statistics a chance to tell their stories. It tracks the lives of thirty working families in Liverpool over one year, as they struggle to manage on incomes at or around the National Minimum Wage. Their accounts are placed within the economic and political context that has shaped their experiences and that of millions of other working families across the country.

This book is required reading for anyone seeking to understand what life is like at the sharp end of 'austerity Britain’.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:

Mark O’Brien and Paul Kyprianou, Just Managing? What it Means for the Families of Austerity Britain. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0112

Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.

The life experiences reported in Just Managing? were told to community researchers as part of the 2014-15 Getting By? project, which was supported by the Liverpool City Council Action Group on Poverty. The study, conducted over one year, captured the experiences of thirty Liverpool families in which one or both parents were in low-paid employment. Using weekly diaries to track their income and spending, and giving regular in-depth interviews, they revealed the challenges they faced as they struggled to cope in their day-to-day lives.